The 8 best-dressed men of the week

Bar of the week: Clean Air Bar with Ketel One vodka

Every week, we scour the city to find the best bars our capital has to offer. Whether you're a cocktail kind of guy, or a man who enjoys a decent draft beer, there's a GQ-worthy drinking spot to suit every taste.

The 8 best-dressed men of the week

Bar of the week: Clean Air Bar with Ketel One vodka

Every week, we scour the city to find the best bars our capital has to offer. Whether you're a cocktail kind of guy, or a man who enjoys a decent draft beer, there's a GQ-worthy drinking spot to suit every taste.

Lifting the lid on The Box

Decadent, daring and debauched, Manhattan's nocturnal cathedral of carnal cool opened its doors to a select few in London's Soho this year. With an exclusive guest list made up of supermodels, rock stars and royalty (both Hollywood and the Windsor kind), the Box nightclub basks in tales of explicit excess - so GQ's Erotic Affairs Editor just had to join the in crowd...

Lying back in a blur of shimmering globe lanterns and reflected light; two fallen cherubs pouring liquor into my mouth, a muscular black dancer gyrating above me... the Box. A nightclub unlike any other. A portal to hedonism: an invitation down the rabbit hole and through the hell gates into a world of brilliant depravity.

The legend of the Box has swirled out from New York since the original club opened in 2007. Now a sister club has opened in London, down a side street in Soho, in a building that used to be Raymond's Revue Bar, founded in the Fifties by Soho's sex king, Paul Raymond, and the first place in England where naked girls performed.

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The Box is the vision of Simon Hammerstein, grandson of lyricist and Broadway impresario Oscar. An ex-raver with a passion for cabaret, he held a taster Box night at Wilton's Music Hall during last year's Frieze Art Fair. Its reception persuaded him London was ready. "It was one of the best-received shows we'd done anywhere,"

Hammerstein told reporters. "I love the British humour, the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and dryness," he says. "Our show has that transgressive humour that the English get."

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Hammerstein has taken care to perpetuate the myth at Walkers Court. Press are barred, but rumours of celebrity wildness have leaked out - Kate Moss leading the charge, X-rated parties in the VIP room. Meanwhile grainy shots have been stolen of dwarf acrobats and dancers dressed as giant vaginas, and the inevitable Daily Mail exposé followed, raising its skirt in horror over the cost of the magnums and the immorality of the acts.

The point of the Box is to shock. To entertain, thrill, amuse and offend. Which is why on any night, from Wednesday to Saturday, a shivering queue of punters - models and non-civilians, those not used to waiting - line the edge of a side street in Soho hoping that they'll be found worthy, allowed to pay their money and partake of its counter reality.

Let us assume your stars are aligned. That the good-looking club Cerberus, Archie, points at you (or you know a man, and your £3,000 has been accepted for a table) and the wooden double doors open.

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Three stunning women in striped basques and mini-veils remove your coat; you are beckoned into a deep, dark hall and up a winding staircase.

More double doors - theatre's the name of the game - are thrust apart by further Josephine Baker reinventions. It's tough not to be excited, especially if you're tired of London's current mix of self-consciously gangster, arriviste R&B, or yellowing Establishment boîtes. Inside is a mass of carved wood, flocked wallpaper and mirrors; there's a sense of chambers and secret spaces. The place juxtaposes boudoir with dowager cottage with brothel, and it works.

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The obvious place to start, late one Thursday night, was the smoking area. Drew, a good-looking heavy, was guarding the far end, which opened out across the roof tops: a Moulin Rouge, cinematic affair, the tiles of Soho buzzing neon, a lavender sky. "You'd be amazed, people love to be out here," he commented. "They stay even when the shows are on."

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This is doubtless testament to the universal power of the smoking corner, always the cool place to be - where the gossip happens. At the same time, the acts are not for the squeamish. "I adore the Box," an event-organiser friend told me. "Grace Jones lookalikes grinding on the bar, naked women sexing each other up on stage; you never know what to expect: one time I came and there was a woman on stage pretending to sever her own limbs, another time there was a massive body builder who turned round to reveal girl bits. It's amazing."

By midnight, punters were filing in. Some straight from the office, and a decent sprinkling of beau monde. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch held court at the best table - on the barman's left as you leave the bar - enjoying his newly single status. The atmosphere at the bar was electric, seize the day.

As I ordered a glass of Moët (£15), a slick, black suit introduced himself as James from LA. And enquired if I knew about the sex games that went on upstairs. And if I wanted to join them.

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With immaculate timing, two barmen rescued me on to the bar; one swinging from the ceiling, lifting me out of James' way, the other rocking me back to dose me with a shot. If only every club could do the same...

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Drum roll. A single spotlight on the red velvet curtains. Enter our compere, drenched in chains and Gothic tattoos; "All American" snarled in black ink across his chest; his peroxide hair gelled into stubby horns, singing a paean to the beautiful people ("We want it beautiful, we want it free...").

He introduced himself as Raven O, his diamanté knuckle-dusters flashing around the mike, and summoned on the acts. A Japanese Michael Jackson who died, and popped back as a zombie in a "Thriller" pastiche. Twin girl contortionists: legs whirling slow-mo into the splits, twisting around each other's bodies, a sinuous, suggestive mingling of limbs. The music was slow, raunchy.

A pleasing diversion from the usual house BPM. An ingénue Alice, wandering in a forest where a topless girl stuck a syringe in her heart, now spinning in a daze through a kinky Wonderland, with fire-eating rabbits and a BDSM feline proffering her cocaine; the red queen arriving to lead an energetic universal striptease, climaxing with her on her throne, eating Alice's pussy, as Alice in turn truffled the cat.

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The first show - of three - wound up with Rose, a caveman tranny revealing bazooka breasts, then a waxed cock and balls, jiggling and dangling in their hairless form. She lifted a whisky bottle from the floor with her sphincter, before spitting its contents over the audience in farewell.

Upstairs, the night unfurled. The VIP room grew more crowded. No sex games, either on stage or around the tables (it turns out VIP performances are more frequent at the weekend). But everywhere a gleeful hubbub of people increasingly animated and wasted.

The only "stars" were Queen drummer Roger Taylor and Rubber Ron, the DJ who set up fetish club Submission 20-odd years ago. "There are some pretty girls here," Ron smiled. "I rate it." "I arrived when the transvestite was pulling plugs out of his arse and licking them," beamed Cuckoo Club co-owner Nick Valentine. "I'm quite freaked out..."

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The Box is a place where anything can happen. It has a glorious element of randomness. You may chance on Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in rubber, then again you may find Prince Harry in a fleece. So go equipped. Turn up ready for anything: that rabbit hole is waiting...